Former Interior secretary: C’mon, Keystone XL is a “win-win”

Erika JohnsenPosted at 6:41 pm on February 5, 2014

While the White House is still — still — adamantly insisting that their eventual Keystone XL pipeline decision (whenever that may be) will be absotively, posilutely not-at-all political after their former Energy Secretary Steven Chu openly conceded that “the decision on whether the construction should happen was a political one and not a scientific one,” yet another of Obama’s former cabinet secretaries is apparently refusing to oblige what is clearly their highly politicized Keystone agenda with any rhetorical cover. This time, it’s former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar:

Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he believes the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada should be built.

Salazar said at an energy conference in Houston Wednesday that the pipeline could be built safely, as long as conditions are imposed. Those conditions would require the pipeline operator to meet tough environmental standards and even pay for conservation programs along the pipeline route.

Salazar told The Associated Press that the pipeline could be a “win-win” project that benefits U.S. energy security while boosting conservation efforts in Montana, South Dakota and other affected states.

Which pretty much puts both Chu and Salazar, if not quite explicitly, on par with the current Energy secretary. He hasn’t said so in quite so many words, but last week, Secretary Moniz rather conspicuously mentioned that we are already undergoing a major energy boom, and we really need to get up to speed on building the energy infrastructure to match it. Rail shipments of oil have increased by more than 8,000 percent since 2006 alone, and as the State Department mentioned in their recent report, not building the Keystone XL pipeline might actually have a worse net effect on carbon emissions than building it. Since, by President Obama’s own admission, the only reason for his holdup is the determination of whether or not the pipeline “will significantly impact carbon emissions,” well… what gives? Because claiming that the decision somehow isn’t “political” might have been reasonable about two or three years ago. Now? Not so much, guys. Not so much.